Smiths News plc

Good afternoon and welcome to the Smiths News PLC full year results investor presentation. Throughout recorded presentation, investors will be in this in any mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives in the meeting itself. However, the company can review the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand it over to Jonathan Bunting, CEO. Good afternoon to you, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Smith News full year results for the 52 weeks ended the 30th of August 2025. I'm John Bunting, CEO of Smith News, and with me today to talk through our full year results presentation is Paul Baker, our group CFO. So looking at the headlines, we're delighted to produce such a strong performance across the year, generating 39.1 million of operating profit, exceeding market expectations. Our growth verticals continue to build, producing a 16% increase in revenues. I'll talk more about our growth activities in a little more detail later on, but I think it's worth highlighting that we are pleased with our progress in the year. Volumes grew, new clients and services were introduced, and the appointment of our first MD of Smith News Recycle, Adam Wiley, is a demonstration of the confidence we have of the scale of the opportunity in that vertical. The ongoing cost savings programme continues and produced 4.9 million of operational efficiencies in FY25. Our three-year investment programme is also continuing to plan with 2.4 million of the incremental 6 million of investments made to date. This programme is designed to give our teams the tools they need to drive service and efficiency across all four verticals. The business ended the period with a net cash position of 3.3 million, supported by 6.9 million in one-off receipts, including 5.4 million from administrators of McColls. Finally, we are proposing a final ordinary dividend of 3.8 pence plus a proposed special dividend of 3 pence, underpinned by those one-off cash receipts and bringing the total for FY25 to 8.55 pence. Over a two-year period, we will therefore have returned £38 million to shareholders. I'll now hand over to Paul to talk through the financials.

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to report a good set of financial results, with profit ahead of expectations at £39.1 million and an improved cash position. For the financial headlines, reported revenue was down 3.6% and down 1.7% excluding the 53rd week of trading in FY2024. As I will explain further on the next slide, newspaper and magazine revenue reduced by 3% at the bottom end of our planning assumption of a 3% to 5% decline, while we saw increases in revenue from both collectibles and new verticals. Adjusted operating profit of £39.1 million was the same as last year and £0.9 million ahead of last year on a 52-week basis. This performance reflects the benefit of collectibles within our product mix and the continued realization of operational cost efficiencies. Adjusted profit after tax was 9% higher than last year at 27 million as a result of lower interest costs. Free cash flow of 36.1 million was 28.8 million higher than a year ago, in part due to timing differences within our normal working capital cycle, but also as a result of 6.9 million one-off cash receipts. The final dividend is proposed at 3.8 pence, which takes the total ordinary dividend to 5.55 pence for the year. In addition, we have proposed a special dividend of 3 pence per share, returning those one-off receipts to shareholders. Both dividends are to be paid in February 2026. Just to give a little more colour to our revenue numbers, our headline revenue numbers show a 3.6% decline on last year, but this is reduced to a 1.7% decline on a 52-week basis. Newspaper and magazines, which still make up almost 90% of our revenue, showed a 3.3% decline. This was partially offset by the annualisation of contract wins in FY 2024. Collectibles revenue increased by 17%, which is a really pleasing result, given that last year's sales included the men's UEFA football collections. And finally, revenue from our new verticals increased by 16% in the period. Expanding on collectibles, this chart shows the growth in the category over the last five years. Collectibles are made up of a number of products, the most significant of which is Premier League trading cards. While Pokemon is now our largest non-football product, we also continue to sell a number of other series, including those associated with Disney characters and Star Wars characters. Pokemon trading cards have seen a surge in popularity recently, with increasing demand from retailers for available stock. From a consumer perspective, interest ranges from children swapping cards in the playground to the trading of pristine individual cards for thousands of pounds. All these products pass through our supply chain and are delivered to retailers in the same way as newspapers and magazines. In the second half of the year, in response to the increased demand, we were able to sell old stock from within the supply chain. This gives a 1.2 million one-off benefit to overall adjusted operating profit for the year. In the next 12 months, Pokemon celebrates its 30th anniversary, and we anticipate a good level of continuing interest. We are working closely with both Pokemon and retailers to ensure availability as each new series launches. On to the adjusted income statement. Below operating profit, net finance charges in the period are £2.6 million lower than last year due to lower levels of borrowing and the improved commercials in the banking facilities signed last year. Net finance charges of £3.3 million includes lease interest of £2.4 million with the remainder being borrowing costs associated with our intra-month working capital swing. With lower finance charges, profit after tax increased by 2.3 million or 9% to 27 million, with EPS then increasing by 0.8 pence to 11.1 pence. Now turning to cash flow. Total free cash flow for the year was 36.1 million compared to 7.3 million last year. Working capital in the current year was an inflow of 4.1 million due to the additional sale of collectibles, which were beneficial to our working capital cycle over the last six months. We anticipate that this benefit will unwind over the next half year. As a reminder, the working capital outflow in FY 2024 was driven by publisher payments of 15.7 million made in the 53rd trading week, which was part of our normal working capital cycle. Capital expenditure of £4.5 million is £0.1 million higher than last year and includes £1.2 million of property spend in relation to our three-year investment programme. Lease payments have increased due to rent renewals over the last 18 months, while interest has reduced due to lower borrowings. Adjusted items were a net inflow of £5.1 million, with legal and investment costs offset by £6.9 million of one-off receipts. These were a £1.5 million tax refund and £5.4 million of receipts from the McColl's administrator. The final position recovered 98% of the original McColl's debt from 2022. And finally for me on slide 10, this chart shows the dividends we have declared over the last five years. Since refinancing and the adoption of our updated capital allocation policy in May 2024, we've proposed or declared 38 million of dividends with ordinary dividends augmented by a two-piece special last year and a three-piece special this year, which returns the one-off receipts I have just mentioned. With ongoing free cash generation of 20 to 25 million per year, our capital allocation policy remains unchanged. Our policy is to pay a two times dividend, then to consider the investment needs across all parts of the business, thereafter seeking to return further amounts to shareholders. That concludes my finance part. I'll now hand back to John.

Thank you, Paul. Now turning to the broader review of the business and an update on our strategic progress. Across FY25, our news and magazine business continues to perform strongly, underpinning our expansion into new areas. These newer services, or verticals as we call them, are designed to improve drop density and the coincidence of delivery, both of which are fundamental to the profitability of any distribution business. Importantly, our new verticals also complement our news and magazine proposition rather than distract from it. I'll now give a brief update on our progress in each area, starting naturally with our news and magazine business. In the news and magazine segment, we've produced another excellent performance over the year, driven by the strength of our business model and boosted by strong growth from collectibles. Against the backdrop of well-documented long-term declines in the market, this performance again highlights both the scale and resilience of the news and magazine market. Furthermore, we've secured 93% of revenues in 2029, providing the strategic backbone to fully utilize our news and magazine operational footprint for expansion into new verticals. It's important to remember that we currently generate the majority of both our revenues and operating profit from news and magazines, working closely with our publisher clients and retail customers to maximise commercial opportunities across the category whilst in tandem seeking ways to ensure category profitability remains a core focus for all stakeholders. Turning back to the results, we saw significant demand for collectibles driven by our proactive trading and a deliberate decision to focus more attention and resource on margin accretive products such as Pokemon cards. With the Men's Football World Cup and Pokemon's 30th anniversary coming up in 2026, we expect this demand and market momentum to continue. In many ways, collectibles should probably sit within our new categories vertical as its market characteristics are very different to newspapers and magazines as Paul highlighted in this slide earlier. As is customary with our business, we have maintained our cost out program resulting in an additional 4.9M in savings and efficiencies and indeed efficiency will remain part of our future business model. The investment in and implementation of our new systems remains ongoing, including new warehouse and transport management systems. Once fully implemented, this will support both our ongoing efficiency and enhanced service across all four verticals. Our investment reinforces our flexible asset light operating model, whilst also enabling our ambitions to add further scale to the business over the coming years. Finally, and we think it's an important message for our investors, The strength of our news and magazine vertical underpins the investor proposition, which in turn supports our investment ambition and dividend commitments. Turning to Smith News Recycle, we've made good progress across the period, with volumes having increased by 49% at over 2,500 tonnes. You will recall that the heart of the proposition is our ability to collect bags of recycling from retail customers whilst delivering newspapers and magazines or on the way back from doing so. This vertical helps with our coincidence of delivery and as we expand our customer base will improve drop density too. As highlighted at the half year results, a key feature of the last six months has been the completion of a number of exploratory trials to target new revenue opportunities across our existing footprint. As you would expect, these trials have generated some valuable insights around market dynamics, retailer behaviours and the most efficient routes to market, which we are now in the process of implementing. For example, the trials highlighted the importance of the role of the waste broker. In recognition of this, we are building more relationships in this area and we are already trialling, providing our recycling service for a leading waste management broker. As previously mentioned, we welcomed Adam Wiley, our new MD for recycling, a newly created position and one we believe Adam is ideally suited for. Adrian Doyne-Smith in July from Veolia, where he held a number of senior roles, including MD of Commercial. With Adam now fully immersed in the business, we are benefiting from his valuable sector insights to further support our progress and we look forward to sharing some of these at the half year. Looking at our new categories vertical, which is focused on leveraging our expertise in warehousing and early morning deliveries by delivering new categories to our existing customer base. Again, like Recycle, this is a vertical that improves our coincidence of delivery as we supply additional products at the same time as news and magazines. In this vertical, we're already engaged in the provision of books and home entertainment products to leading national supermarket chains and high street retailers. As an example, we delivered approximately 1.3 million books to three different supermarket retailers in the year and believe the total opportunity is far, far bigger. We've also sought to improve efficiencies by investing in a new warehouse management system, enabling the team to consolidate activities. By moving books into a single site supported by this new warehouse management system, our cost per unit has improved by 35% by increasing our throughput rate and pick volumes. Additionally, our partnership with Hallmark is now live across circa 175 stores with 63,000 cards sold in FY25. It's a great example of how we're using our established network to provide excellent commercial opportunities to both broaden our reach and create new revenues. Moving on to our final mile category, where we utilize our existing contractor base to serve new clients with new products in new locations, mainly within our existing geographic reach. This vertical, therefore, is seeking to add drop density. This is our least mature vertical, and we are still at the proposition development stage in our cycle. Encouragingly, we are engaged in over 20 live contracts of varying sizes, although obviously not all of these will result in scalable opportunities. Through our established UK infrastructure, we are delivering time critical in-night and early morning engineering parts on behalf of global logistics partners. Following the successful launch of this partnership, we've recently secured a substantial expansion across the Midlands. The contract will run for three years and will be worth circa one million in revenue per annum. This is an example of the progress we're making in one particular sub-market of the early morning final mile sector. That sub-market being, of course, the engineer spare parts sector. To give this a bit more colour, I thought I'd share the following slide with you. So, the engineering spare parts market is worth in excess of £150 million and is one we believe offers excellent growth potential for the business. Looking at the fundamentals, this is all about ensuring engineers have the daily parts they need at the very start of their working day, as this enables them to optimize their productivity, whilst also minimizing the downtime of the machine they are seeking to fix or service. In this chart here, you can see there are a number of variants within this supply chain, but let's focus on the four principal ones. At one extreme, the engineer simply drives to a local Smith News warehouse and collects the parts they need for the day. At the other extreme, the spare part is delivered by Smiths News into an engineer's vehicle. And then there are two variants to this, which involve the spare parts being delivered by Smiths News to a local point close to the engineer. And these can either be a retailer or indeed a locker. We have live activity in all four variants offering different scale. This is helping us understand more about the market and more about where we can add value to the supply chain. The contract we have recently been awarded actually includes aspects of three of the four variants. I hope by sharing this slide with you, it gives you a greater understanding of what early morning final mile can look like and why we believe it can be distinctly different to the through the day parcel carrier market. Turning to our three year, six million investment programme, which is now underway and expected to complete in FY2027. This additional investment seeks to future-proof the business by further improving our ability to provide a high-quality service to all four verticals. These investments will also provide new cost-saving opportunities, which remain an important part of the business model. As I've already touched upon in previous slides, we are actively seeking to optimize warehouse operations through upgrading our systems to better support our customers. An important part of the selection process is the focus the providers placed on AI capability in both their current thinking and future solution roadmap. As previously highlighted in our books delivery, we're already seeing efficiencies from the implementation of our new warehouse management system at a key regional hub and will now continue this rollout to other hubs. In addition, we are focused on a new transport management system with initial implementation expected in FY2026. This investment is not just technology driven, but people driven too. We've invested in our team and talent, ensuring SmithsNews has the skillset and people to support the broader business going forward as we seek to capitalise on further opportunities. And finally, turning to the outlook. We expect continued resilience in our news and magazine markets alongside our operating efficiency targets and the ongoing strength in the collectibles market. The new verticals, which are highly complementary to our established news and magazine activities, will broaden our revenue and profit streams as they evolve. The cost out programme is delivering savings to plan and our proactive investments supports the whole business across all four verticals in the medium term. We continue to implement our capital allocation policy, which is culminated in a combined ordinary and special dividend of 8.55 pence. As you saw in Paul's chart over the last two years, we will have returned £38 million to shareholders. We remain extremely confident in the business moving forward with the outlook remaining in line with expectation. Before we pass over to questions, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Paul for all of his efforts over the last four years. Paul has been an excellent colleague and as we've seen with these results, Paul will be leaving Smith News in a strong financial and operational position. We naturally look forward to welcoming Richard Clay in the new year and working with George Cooper, currently our group financial controller, who will assume the role of interim CFO in the intervening period. I'd like to thank you all for listening and Paul and I are now happy to take any questions you may have.

That's great and thank you very much for your presentation. What I'll do is I'll just bring your camera up now. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions. You can do so just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the top right corner of your screen. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And thank you to all the investors for submitting those. Paul, at this point, if I could hand over to you to read out the questions, that'd be great. And then I'll pick up from you at the end.

Sure. Thank you very much. Start with one from Peter, John. 16% revenue growth. Can you talk to the profit generated? I think it was about 2 million last year.

yeah thanks for that question peter you're correct it was two million last year and it will be 1.4 million this year why the difference because with the increasing revenues at 16 as you saw and the increase in activity and let's take recycle at 49 it's meant we've had to plan to increase our capacity give us more capability um and indeed in some cases and we've seen this without the investment in adam why you bring in some new skills to help us scale so From our perspective, it's all good news. We're doing more with more services for more clients, and as a consequence of that, we've made a number of planned investments, but the actual numbers are 2 million down to 1.4, but I can say it's on a planned basis.

Thanks, John. There's a few questions around growth, but we'll start with one from Hill C. Thank you to management team very much. Regarding the collectibles business, do you see opportunities to expand into new categories such as Japanese something or other niche product lines, other product lines in collectibles?

Well, I would... Firstly, I'd echo your comments around the great job Paul's done. He's certainly been a very good colleague to work with over the last four years, and I'm sure he'll be a super success in his new company too. In terms of collectibles, we've had a really good year with collectibles, as you've seen through our numbers, and we're expecting that 2026 will also be a good year. Obviously, the Premier League continues to be super popular. We've then got the World Cup in America in the summer, which again, we're expecting to 30th anniversary of Pokemon. So for a variety of reasons, we're expecting 2026 to be a good year for collectibles. In terms of the products, we're always looking for additional products. Japanese anime is clearly very popular. That's not escaped our attention, but we've got nothing that we're looking to announce at this point.

Thanks, John. We've got a few questions from Simon here. So thank you, Simon, for that. I think he had a few questions about some of the growth areas. Everyone on collectibles, I think, just answered that. Also one on the engineering spare parts. How did the trial came about and whether there's further such tenders from similar customers are possible? Do you think the engineering spare parts is a growth opportunity, I think?

Very happy to set that question. So how did the initial trial come about? Well, as you might imagine, we do have a small business development team and they proactively seek out opportunities. We did undertake a trial that I flagged at the half year. That trial went well in terms of demonstrating our capability and then the provider issued a tender and we were successful in securing a material contract in the Midlands on a three year basis. So very much like we've demonstrated in other verticals, we start off small, try and demonstrate our capability part space. And as I mentioned earlier, we think that market's circa 170 million and therefore there's lots to go for.

Thanks, John. I think one I can pick up here from Simon on the dividend. Is it likely the special dividend next year will be reduced due to the positive one-offs this year? And also, is it likely that any further specials are rolled into a larger ordinary dividend going forward? thanks Simon for the opportunity to sort of reiterate. So our capital allocation policy is to pay a two times ordinary dividend. So that remains in place and that's what we would look to do first and foremost. We would then look to invest in the business, in the core business, in any growth verticals or indeed any M&A that we might add scale or skills to those verticals at a point in time. And then after that, if there isn't we'd love to return that to shareholders. So it's a special this year, that is not a repeatable number, we'll look at it again next year and make a decision based on the facts, depending on what the business needs are at the time. And then another one from Simon on warehouse management system, how's that run out there?

Thank you, Simon. I think this question actually came in before I probably covered some of this on the new category section. Look, we're really pleased with the initial implementation of the warehouse management system. And I guess the acid test is, is it making it more efficient? And you'll recall that when I talked about book implementation for the warehouse management system, we've actually realized a 35% efficiency in the way we're now processing books. So I guess in many ways, the numbers speak louder than my words.

Thanks, John. One from Christopher L. around the trial with Hallmark greetings cards and how it informs broader category expansion plans.

Yeah. So, I mean, we're pleased with the progress with Hallmark. They've been a good partner to work with. What we have demonstrated, I think, so far with the customers that we're working with is there's absolutely a market for greetings cards and for Hallmark's greetings cards. And what we're doing over the last few months has been to finesse that range. We've actually recently introduced a value range into our independent customers to see whether that can drive even more traction. So, I mean, I think the future for Hallmark as far as we're concerned is to add more retailers and continue to finesse the range. But where we make things like this work, it really does add to our bottom line profitability because clearly we're delivering them at the same time as we're delivering newspapers and magazines, and therefore the efficiency of that is really important to us.

Thanks, John. One that I'll pick up from Ian R. Great results, thank you. So let's start. Please can you expand, explain the large downgrades to FY26 free cash flow and net cash? I think we've talked to... collectibles in the second half of the year have been a benefit to our working capital so we've actually seen an inflow of four million in the year and that four million will unwind in the first half so that's a large part of it then obviously the analysts will also now factor in the 3p special dividend that we announced today so that explains that one Sorry, I'm squinting here. It's in small writing in the back, so I'm trying to read it all. Just bear with me a second. From Mark, a question about scale, I think, about running vertical. When do we think there'll be a large material contribution to our operating profit?

Yes, good question. I mean, I think you can see that we've gone from zero to 2 million and then this year 1.4, but on a planned basis because we're investing in capability and capacity. So we're doing all of those things because we do actually believe these are going to turn into scale ventures. At what point over the short to medium term, you know, I guess you can take a view on that. What we're clear on is that the things that we are now providing in that early morning space are gaining traction. We're winning business and we're providing good levels of service. So as far as we're concerned, you know, we're really excited about our growth, our great potential.

Thanks, John. And from Gavin, question about the share register, any updates on the share register, any new holders, income growth? Actually, Gavin, there hasn't been much change since the half year. So we really haven't, it's been a very stable register over the last few months. So we've still got the same split between long holders that are certainly income focused that are largely income but some some you know looking for the opportunity of growth in the medium term david s david that's about christmas how will you cope with cards required pre-christmas um before the biggest time of year as you look it's a good question um we've obviously got good visibility of what we think those uh

increases are likely to be. And in reality, it's still relatively modest for the types of volumes we're used to delivering and handling as a business. So we're not expecting to be disrupted by any kind of Christmas peak from a Christmas cost perspective.

There's another question from David, actually, around overnight delivery, John, and saying, recognises the fact that, you know, engineering company sounds an excellent idea, but also what are the competition, you know, when I deliver, what are the other competitors in that space?

Yeah, I mean, they are, I guess they tend to form into two types of competitor. There are the scale global players that you'd be aware of, although their sweet spot tends to be more through the day deliveries actually. And therefore that's where some of the opportunity comes because they are happy to partner with someone who's a specialist in early morning. And then there are local early morning specialists who are maybe particularly strong in a region. And what we're hoping we can demonstrate is that our expertise early in the morning and our ability to offer a scale solution rather than a regional solution is compelling for the client. So far, so good.

Thanks. And the last one from Simon was about recycling and Adam Wiley and what were the

that you've seen yeah I mean Adam joined us in July we've been delighted with Adam in the first few weeks he's been with us if you're asking me what would Adams single biggest takeaway be I think he really likes the idea of the frequency of which we could collect recycling and provide recycling solutions because clearly we are a daily business out early morning every morning that we can do a daily collection if required.

And a question from Mark, a more factual question. What is the typical number of drops you make each morning?

Well, that does vary by geography and it does vary by round, but in excess of 30.

That's 30 each round and a total drop of 25,000, isn't it? A total number of places we would deliver to each morning. But yeah, 13 around, and then we've got around across the country. And the final one just come in. Can you elaborate on the market response to the Hallmark and Hot Wheels product lines? We've done Hallmark already.

Yeah, we haven't talked about Hot Wheels so far, but very well noticed for whoever has asked that question. So we have been doing some experimentation, as we call it, with Hot Wheels, offering that to our independent customers, and that's been exceptionally well received by them. And I think what we've got there are two different examples of new categories. For greetings cards, it's about saying, we think we can offer you a different greetings card solution to the one we've got, potentially with a more modern, compelling product. And again, for Hot Wheels, we think we can give you access to a market that's doing really well, and with brands that are doing really well that you might struggle to get access for if you're an independent retailer. And so they're both performing well, but for differing reasons.

Thank you, John. And thank you, everyone, for your questions. That concludes our Q&A session. Thank you.

That's great. Well, thanks very much for answering the questions from investors. And of course, the company can view all the questions submitted today and we'll publish the responses on the InvestorMeet company platform. But just before redirecting investors, provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to you both. Jonathan, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yeah, sure. No problem. So thank you, first of all, for dialing in and listening to Paul and I talk through our results. It's much appreciated. We hope you're pleased with the results. We certainly are. We think we've delivered another strong set of financials. You can clearly see the evidence of growth now in terms of 16% in revenues, but more than that in terms of activity. We've got next to no debt really in the business now, we're net cash, so that's a good position. The investments we're making in the future are starting to pay dividends, and you've already heard me talk about the book example of how that can drive new efficiency. So we think actually from the way the business is performing, we're really, really pleased perspective. From an investor perspective, you know, you've heard about the special that we're proposing again this time around a very strong ordinary dividend. And you've heard me talk about the 38 million we'll have returned to investors over the last two years. So I think the key thing I would ask you to remember is this business does throw off a lot of free cash. And with that free cash, that enables us to both invest in the news and magazine vertical, provide the fuel for growth, which is really, really important, and still have enough left that we continue to provide a compelling proposition for our investors. And so that would be the closing message I'd like to leave you with.

That's great. Well, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations. As part of the management team of Smiths News PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.